1. Field Of The Invention
The present invention pertains to providing power to integrated circuits. More particularly, this invention relates to automatically controlling the voltage supplied to an integrated circuit.
2. Background
Technology is ever-progressing, continually providing a wide variety of integrated circuits which provide an ever-increasing variety of functions. Generally, an integrated circuit (IC), also referred to as a chip, is a combination of multiple electrical devices (such as transistors, resistors, etc.) housed together in a single package. ICs are typically mounted to a circuit board; for example, an IC may contain multiple pins and the IC is plugged into a socket on the circuit board.
Many ICs or chips require only a single voltage for operation. This single voltage is supplied to the chip via one or more of the pins which couple the chip to the circuit board. However, many different chips have evolved, resulting in different voltage requirements for different chips.
One solution to properly supplying voltages to chips with different voltage requirements would be to provide a different circuit board for each of the different chips. However, although the voltage requirements can vary from chip to chip, the remaining functions provided by the circuit board to which the chip is mounted may be the same for a wide variety of different chips. Thus, rather than having to build a separate circuit board for each of the different chips, it would be beneficial to provide a single circuit board which supports different chips having different voltage requirements. For example, such a circuit board would allow different processors with different voltage requirements to be mounted on the same circuit board.
Another solution to properly supplying voltages to chips with different voltage requirements would be to provide jumpers which allow the end user to make changes to the circuit board so that the proper voltage is supplied to the chip. However, requiring an end user to make such changes has several disadvantages. For example, such a requirement increases the work an end user must perform prior to operation of the system, reduces the "user friendliness" of the system, and increases the chances for damage to one or more components on the circuit board if the board is configured incorrectly. Therefore, it would be beneficial to provide a circuit board which automatically determines the proper voltage(s) to be supplied to a chip mounted on the circuit board.
Additionally, given the costs of modern technology, it would be beneficial to provide such automatic support in an inexpensive manner.
As will be described in more detail below, the present invention provides a mechanism for automatically controlling integrated circuit supply voltages that achieves these and other desired results which will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the description to follow.